I have recently started a Patreon page intended to fund the research for this website. There are a series of “rewards” that are specified at the different levels which include: gaining early access to articles, having your questions answered on the website, become a voting member of Knife Steel Nerds to provide input on future research, and a Knife Steel Nerds mug. The major goals listed on the Patreon page are to start a set of toughness and edge retention tests which will be decided along with the Patreon contributors.
Money is used for the following:
- Website and hosting fees
- Articles and books to reference in articles
- Experiments – purchasing steel, heat treating, machining, testing, metallography, shipping between locations, etc.
Patreon is a service that is quite commonly used for funding various creators including podcasts, artists, YouTube creators, and even some science. They handle all of the logistics of taking money so I don’t have to, and they have a good reputation. I have setup the contributions to be on a per-article basis so that no one is contributing funds when/if I am not generating content. You can set a limit on how much is contributed per month if you are worried that I might write more articles than you can afford.
Visit the Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/Knifesteelnerds
There are also several things you can do without contributing money:
- Comment on the blog posts with questions and critiques.
- Send journal articles to me that I haven’t referenced in my blog posts. More references help to broaden our understanding of different topics.
- Make simple knives for edge toughness/impact tests
- Send me charpy impact samples to test. We are always looking for more steels and heat treatments to our toughness database. E-mail me about what steel or heat treatment studies you would like to do. I am most interested in steels that are at least 58 Rc. We get the most information about a given steel by doing a range of different heat treatments such as different austenitizing and tempering temperature combinations. Specialty heat treatment types I am very interested in comparing are various types of multiple quenches as well as comparisons between conventional, martempering, and austempering.
Toughness Samples Specifications
A cryo treatment should be performed after the quench to minimize retained austenite (unless doing a comparison between cryo and non-cryo)
Final grinding and finishing should be performed after heat treatment is complete
2.5 x 10 x 55 mm unnotched samples with the 55 mm length along the rolling direction (unless comparing orientations)
Sides of samples must be parallel and dimensions must be 10 ± 0.075 mm
Thickness must be 2.5 ± 0.025 mm
Length is less critical, 55 ± 1 mm
Each side should be finished to at least 70 grit (2 micron Ra)
Steels we would like to add (incomplete list):
440C
12C27
K390
15N20